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Walmart Asks Employees to Donate Food to Help Starving Coworkers


A photo showing a Walmart food drive asking employees to donate canned goods to help fellow employees who can't afford a Thanksgiving dinner is once again drawing attention to the company's staggeringly low wages.

As Consumerist notes, the photo, taken inside a Walmart store in Canton, Ohio, is being widely shared by OUR Walmart — a labor organization dedicated to unionizing Walmart associates through the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

But the food drive itself is real, as the Cleveland Plain Dealer confirmed, as is the fact that over half of all employees make $25,000 a year or less (according to Walmart — OUR Walmart says it's closer to $15,000), and the fact that the federal poverty line currently stands at $23,550 for a four-person household.

And Walmart's spokesman Kory Lundberg didn't help matters much when he said the drive was "part of the company’s culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships."

Speaking with ABC News, Lundberg also talked up Walmart's Associates in Critical Need Trust — a Walmart nonprofit funded by Walmart employees through payroll deductions or direct contributions that grants up to $1,500 to associates undergoing extreme hardships such as homelessness.

And, as some have noted, the food being donated by employees to employees will likely be purchased at Walmart, sending that money right back into the Walton family pockets.

Worst of all, the employees on the receiving end of their coworkers' generosity may not even get to enjoy the food with their families on Thanksgiving: Walmart announced last week it plans to open its doors at 6 P.M. on Thanksgiving Day — two hours earlier than last year — to accommodate Black Friday shoppers.

Don't tell me Thomas has mislead me...

If you'r e looking at an end to the bottomless pit, er..good luck

I have been called insane when I clicked their lit.

It didn't help.

But we have each other.

And they don't.

And I noticed on a news report about the Philippine disaster from a UK Red Cross centre how they were loading Asda pasta...you know those big carry bags of pasta into those trunk sized plastic crates......not saying the Filipinos don't need help....but I guess it just means Asda/Wallmart are making money out of these charities cos I bet your bottom dollar they got some discounted dosh for it

wake_up_bomb wrote:
I wonder how much Maverick got paid for that appearance.

And his friend wolverine too.

I suppose the really perverse element of this story is that the local manager, who at least acknowledged this poverty and tried to do something to alleviate it in the short term, draws the fire for a company which did fuck all but profit from their exploitation.

What's the betting that local manager got chewed-the-fuck-out for generating bad publicity?

The world is fucked and it's bastards like Walmart who are raping it!

angelchemuel wrote:
and their company logo associated with good works, splashed on umpteen stations for free during horrendously expensive prime-time advertising slots.

That alone would pay for the 'free' pasta investment 1,000 times over.

truth is you never really make any money until you start telling people what to do.

its called the fuck you business model.

McDonald's Advice To Underpaid Employees: Break Food Into Pieces To Keep You Full
The "advice" was published on the “McResource” website, meant to give tips to fast-food workers.

November 19, 2013

The latest friendly advice from McDonald’s to their low-wage workers includes tips on how to better handle stress--as well as how to fill yourself up better with dinner. The fast-food corporation instructs workers that breaking food “into pieces” will keep you full.

The advice was published on the “McResource” website, meant to give tips to fast-food workers. While you need to be a McDonald’s worker to log-in to the website, details of the advice have been publicized by the group Low Pay Is Not OK, a union-backed group seeking to organize low-wage workers at McDonald’s. The effort is part of the larger campaign to push for living wages, benefits and the right to organize among low-wage workers across a variety of industries.

A video published by Low Pay Is Not OK shows the website’s advice to workers. One piece of advice given is for workers to take two vacations a year--an impossible task given that many employees work two low-wage jobs. It tells workers to “sing away stress” because it “can lower your blood pressure.” And it tells McDonald’s employees to break “food into pieces,” which “results in eating less and still feeling full.”

McDonald’s had previously come under fire for telling workers to apply for food stamps while being employed by a fast-food corporation raking in billions annually. Many McDonald’s workers make minimum wage. The federal minimum wage rate is $7.25 an hour.

The McDonald’s advices comes as more and more corporations undergo scrutiny for paying workers low-wages.

Source:

$7.25 per hour is the equivalent of £4.50. So you're actually in this day and age paying your employees less than a fiver an hour. If they do a 40 hour week, they get paid £180, minus tax. And we're told that slavery was abolished.

After some quick calculations, I would make your take home pay to be the equivalent of £700 per month. Why would you need a second job on that sort of respectable wage?

Although I suppose you could keep profits high and the salaries low if the State were to step in to provide subsidies gleaned by taxing the other workers.
Like you were working hand in glove, a merger, if you prefer, of the Corporations and the State.
Dammit, what's the name for that again!?

No, not "cunts", the other name.

They already do just that in the UK, working family tax credits etc.

The state shouldn't be subsidising the private sector though, nor should they be arranging red carpets for monopolies.

If anything they should be throwing subsidies at small biz not big corporates.

andyh wrote: Yup, it's the same in the US.
But as the majority of politicos are just employees of the corps, wtf else can we expect?

andyh wrote:
I'd be screwed without tax credits as well. I've tried pointing out the ridiculousness of the situation, as someone working 40+ hrs a week but most just don't seem to grasp it.

Ab Origine wrote:
Its a total c*nt of a situation.
I'd be willing to wager most if not all NaN's haven't a clue how much money gets spent on working tax credit benefits for people actually in work...the daily mail sure as hell would not visit that topic.

Ab Origine wrote: I've tried many, many times to explain the absurdity of just the food production system to people, but so far I got the best response when I discussed it with a brick wall. That wall really took in what I was saying, and had some interesting and perceptive responses compared to the people I've told.